Filmmaker Paul Duane pays a personal tribute to the late, great Dublin-born actress Peggy Cummins, who passed away on December 29th in London, aged 92.
I'm very saddened to hear of the death of Peggy Cummins, the Irish actress who became an icon of cinema when she played Annie Laurie Starr in the movie Gun Crazy - not only a classic noir, but a foundational film in both the French New Wave & American independent cinema of the 70s.
I met Peggy at the Lumiére festival in Lyons, where I was screening my film Natan. The place was full of famous people, Tarantino, Cimino, von Sydow, but the only guest I wanted to meet was Peggy & she was nowhere to be seen.
As I got ready to leave the next morning, the festival organisers asked me if I'd mind sharing my taxi to the airport. Of course not, I replied. Who with? "Peggy Cummins," they said, and I just looked at them in disbelief. It was a little bit of fate.
At the hotel I found her in the lobby & nervously introduced myself. She almost jumped for joy. "You're Irish? So am I!" she said. I've met many Americans who think a nodding acquaintance with an Irish grand-cousin is enough to claim Irishness, but Peggy backed her claim up with facts. She was born in Dublin & her earliest acting happened on the stages of the Abbey & the Gaiety. She loved Ireland & wanted to visit as much as she could. I promised, then & there, to try to come up with a reason to invite her as soon as I could.
The taxi ride to the airport was fun - at one point our driver disappeared for ages, to collect another passenger, and Peggy suggested with a mischievous glint that we should hijack the car & drive ourselves... knowing, of course, that a getaway car scene is among her claims to cinematic glory. I was having the time of my life. We stuck together at the airport til our respective flights were called & I promised to keep in touch.
Thanks to the enthusiasm of Gráinne Humphreys I was able to invite Peggy to the Dublin Film Festival in 2014 to introduce Gun Crazy. She was thrilled to screen the film in her home town, and I was thrilled to sit beside the star of one of my favourite films of all time, watching it on the big screen together with an appreciative audience. She stayed for a couple of days & I remember one evening in the hotel when she held court with Richard Dreyfuss & William Klein among the others at her table. She was a remarkable storyteller, full of detailed recollection of people she'd met, but also remarkably discreet when in public. She could be much more forthcoming in private.
Her Hollywood career was, I think, derailed by her strong will & reluctance to unquestioningly obey orders from above. She had definitely been groomed for the top - she was flown to Hollywood, during wartime, on a military plane surrounded by generals, accompanied by her mother as she was too young to fly alone at the time...
But the same grit that made her too much for the studios made her perfect for Joseph H Lewis when he was casting his groundbreaking, psychosexual crime story, Gun Crazy. And the very real, physical hunger she experienced when trying to survive in Hollywood manifested in Annie Laurie Starr's intense, sexually frank manner. It was a performance that was way out of time, and which can still seem shockingly powerful today.
I last saw Peggy maybe 18 months ago, when she was on one of her periodic visits to Dublin. I'd tried to bring her over to introduce her other great claim to fame, the horror classic Night Of The Demon, but her scheduling conflicted with the possible date (she was a great traveller & was always off to new places to speak about her career at festivals around the world).
I thought a lot about calling her but my life was in upheaval during this period & I thought it better to wait. I'd been planning to call her this week to wish her a happy new year & try to meet up in London soon. It's awful to know that this isn't going to happen. I find it hard to believe she's gone - she was always an indomitable woman, showing hardly any sign of her age, something she put down to the years she'd spent out in all weathers as the wife of a country vet (the life she left acting to pursue, and a decision she never had any cause to regret).
One of the beautiful by-products of the kind of life I've had is that I've had the chance to meet some extraordinary people, and one of the most remarkable, and one of the ones I am happiest to have spent time talking, laughing and drinking with, was Peggy Cummins. I'm always going to be in the debt of that anonymous festival co-ordinator who decided to save a few quid by making the guests share their airport taxis. They did me an incalculable favour.
